Speed up Windows Vista Search bar

The search bar is an extremely useful and productive tool. At any time, you can just pull out your start menu and find certain files, or even use it alternatively as a Run Command bar. But as your files start to pile up, the search bar will slow down. By limiting your search results, you can get the search bar to work more efficiently.

1) Access your Start Menu Properties:Right click the Start Pearl > Properties

2) Click on Customize

3) Limit your Search Results: The search options are pretty straight forward;

* Search Communications - Searches files in Windows Mail and Contacts. Deselect this if you use neither.

* Search Favourites and History - Searches your IE favourites and history. Deselect this if you don’t use IE.

* Search Files - This is pretty self-explanatory. I prefer to have it to search this user’s files since it is rarely that I ever search files in other accounts.

* Search Programs - Leave this on if you want to use the search menu bar as a Run Command bar as well

The amount of speed increased will depend on your preferences. I recommend selecting search this user’s files since it is most likely you will be searching for files you have created. Searching the entire index will take much much longer.

other option -

When a users enters text in the search box on the start panel Windows automatically searches the file index as well. The file index includes all of the searchable files on your hard drive and can be quite large. One way to speed up searching through your start menu applications is to narrow the scope of the search so that it does not include hard drive files.

Prevent Start Menu Searches from searching the File index:

1. Open Registry Editor (regedit).

2. Navigate through

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced

3. Find and right click on Start_SearchFiles and select Modify.

4. Set the Value to 0.

Restart the Explorer.exe process or just reboot your computer.